Both players share the distinction of having played with ''The Rocket'', Maurice Richard, and winning Cups alongside him. Béliveau, of course, as one of the all-time greatest players, has won more often (10 Cups as a player, seven as a Habs executive, mostly as vice-president).

He has also won a ton of individual awards, including the inaugural Conn Smythe Trophy in 1964-65. Add to that an Art Ross (1955-56), two Harts (1955-56 and 1963-64) and six other Hart top-five finishes including three as runner-up, a team-record 10-season captaincy (Saku Koivu ties him in years with 10, but technically held the title for 9 active seasons, as he lost one to the 2004 lockout), six First Team and four Second Team end-of-season All-Star selections as well as thirteen All-Star Game appearances. He led the league in goals twice, which in this day and age would have given him a Rocket Richard Trophy each time as well.

Having retired at the end of the Cup-winning 1970-71 season with a 25-goal, 76-point season (in 70 games), good for points leader on the team, he was inducted into the Hall Of Fame in 1972; as for Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky in my time, there was no reason to mess around with formalities when it came to the classiest player to wear skates in recorded history (and in the NHL era), so they didn't wait the usual four years after retirement in his case.

And yet he was never one for high honors, particularly those that were awarded without votes; he declined two separate offers to be a Canadian Senator and one to be Governor General (i.e. the person in the highest position of power in Canada, as the representative of the Queen of England, who supersedes even the Prime Minister, technically, in the Canadian political food chain), and only reluctantly accepted the titles of Grand Officer of Québec and Companion to the Order of Canada.

In his later years, he had beaten cancer and suffered two harsh strokes before nature took its course and took him where we'll all end up. I had sent him cards on many occasions between 2007 and 2012 then let him be; I received all of them back earlier this summer, unsigned. I had first met him at my grandfather's funeral (he'd been a sports journalist from the 1950s to the 1970s) in the mid-1990s but, obviously, didn't have him sign anything at the time. He was very respectful and polite, even to a child such as myself, treating me basically as an adult though I was (very) far from it. He made an impression, every single time. There was an aura about him that you didn't feel around others, a calming, reassuring yet serious presence.

I knew he would probably never sign cards again about two years ago, so at the time I started looking around for deals - and lost many an Ebay auction in the process. I began looking a little more closely upon his passing, and absolutely wanted to have him be the bearer of #4 in my Habs Numbers Project, so in the event that I wouldn't find my own cards, I acquired this one from trusted Ottawa-area collector BG:

It's card #580 from Upper Deck's 2008-09 O-Pee-Chee set (and Legends sub-set), signed in beautiful silver sharpie. It features a reprint of a classic team picture where he is wearing the team's classic and eternal bleu-blanc-rouge uniform.

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About Me

Writer, mostly, in mediums diverse and similar: musician, film-maker, poet - not the bad type, nor the pretentious type. It's more that I suck at everything except producing words and shouting ideas at people. Oh, and I'm the guy who brings you UnPop Montreal yearly, helping the little guy get a voice in this variety-deprived city.